Minnesota's Mall of America: the nation's premier shopping mall celebrates its 10th year in Bloomington, Minnesota

Travel America, Nov-Dec, 2002 by Randy Mink

All Seasons Wild Bird Store is well-stocked with bird feeders, audio tapes, and all sorts of paraphernalia for the birdwatcher. At the Basic Brown Bear Factory you can pick out the clothes and accessories for your custom-made teddy bear, then watch it be stuffed and sewn by hand. Al's Farm Toys has loads of metal tractors for the collector, plus farm-related books and puzzles; you can even get a John Deere logo pillow or set of Deere dinnerware. The mall has 10 other toy shops.

Always on the lookout for sweets and gourmet foods, I was attracted to places like the Apple Bakery, a caramel lover's heaven. I couldn't decide between the apple-caramel turnovers, caramel apples, pecan rolls drenched in caramel frosting, or the apple cider donuts. At Beavertails, a Canadian chain with an outlet at the Canada pavilion at Walt Disney World's Epcot Center, we tried crispy flatbread (shaped like a beaver's tail) with cinnamon and apples. Those with a sweet tooth flock to the Betty Crocker Bakery in Camp Snoopy, which makes excellent cookies, cinnamon rolls, and apple fritters.

The Garlic Shoppe sells garlic presses, gift baskets, and garlic-flavored goodies from jelly, mayonnaise, and mustard to salsa, pasta sauce, and snack chips. It's an outlet of a company in Gilroy, California, the "Garlic Capital of the World."

At AquaMassage, passersby stop to watch customers--face down and protected by raingear--being massaged by jets of water inside blue-glass capsules. This car wash-like experience costs $10 for seven minutes, $25 for 20 minutes.

Camp Snoopy, the nation's largest indoor theme park, has its own food court and sit-down restaurants, the world's largest Snoopy store, and more than 25 rides and attractions. Under skylights that allow in about 70 percent of the natural light, a log-and-stone motif accents a setting reminiscent of Minnesota's north country; some of the 400 fir and hardwood trees tower more than 35 feet. Members of the "Peanuts" gang--Linus, Lucy, Sally, and Charlie Brown--make appearances. Rides like Paul Bunyan's Log Chute, the Ripsaw coaster, and Mighty Axe play up the lumberjack theme. Admission to the park is free; guests pay per ride or attraction.

Young children like General Mills' Cereal Adventure, where they can explore the Cheerios Play Park, Lucky Charms Magical Forest, and Trix Fruity Carnival while learning about how cereal is made, from farm to factory. Visitors can even create their own cereal combination and take it home in a personalized package, or just have a bowl of their favorite General Mills product with milk. Parents enjoy watching TV cereal commercials from yesteryear and viewing the exhibit on athletes who have appeared on boxes of Wheaties, "Breakfast of Champions," since the 1930s.

At the mall's aquarium, Underwater Adventures, visitors ooh and aah as they ride a slow-moving walkway through a glass tunnel of fish, sharks, stingrays, sea turtles, and other inhabitants of the Mississippi River system, which begins in northern Minnesota and continues down to the Gulf of Mexico. A touch tank at the end lets visitors handle sharks and other creatures of the deep. The Seven Seas Gallery features poisonous dart frogs and glow-in-the-dark scorpions, plus an octopus who eats her dinner (a soft-shell crab) out of a peanut butter jar. A major turtle center and hatchery, with more than 1,000 turtles representing 80 species, opened this past spring.